The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran

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The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran Page 83

by David Crist


  16. CINCCENT message to Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Update” (190900Z), April 1998, p. 3.

  17. COMDESRON 22 message to CJTFME, “Operation Praying Mantis Post Mission Timeline” (210215Z), April 1988, p. 2; Rear COMDESRON TWO TWO, unclassified VHS tape of Persian Gulf Operations, Timeline 10-52, copy shown to author by Rear Admiral Dyer.

  18. CT801.1 message to CINCCENT, “Praying Mantis OPREP-3 Feeder 002” (DTG 180645Z), April 1988, Naval Historical Center, Box 20, Folder 9 Praying Mantis Messages.

  19. Dyer interview.

  20. CJTFME message to USS Wainwright, “SAG Instruction” (DTG 180728Z), April 1988, JTFME/MEF General Attorney Files, JTFME/MEF Messages 1985 and January 20–April 19, 1988, Operations Archives, Naval Historical Center, Box 14, Series IV.

  21. Chandler interview; Captain Martin Drake, USN, interview with author, September 1, 2005.

  22. USS Wainwright message to JTFME, “Operation Praying Mantis” (241748Z), April 1988, Naval Historical Center, Box 20, Folder 9, pp. 2, 5; Perkins, “The Surface View.”

  23. Chandler interview; Drake interview.

  24. JTFME message, “SAG C Summary of Operations, 18 April” (201223Z), April 1988, p. 2; USS Wainwright message to JTFME, “Operation Praying Mantis First Impressions/Chronology” (202320Z), April 1988; Craig Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles That Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 305.

  25. Symonds, Decision at Sea, p. 305.

  26. Drake interview.

  27. USS Wainwright message to CJTFME, “Operation Praying Mantis First Impressions/Chronology” (DTG 202330Z), April 1988, Operations Archives, Naval Historical Center, Series VI, Box 20, Folder 9 Praying Mantis Messages.

  28. Chandler interview.

  29. USS Wainwright message to CTF 800, “SSM Engagement Data” (200246Z), April 1988, p. 1. At the time of the Joshan’s Harpoon launch, the Wainwright was in a broad weave and the starboard side was angled more toward the Iranian boat, thus her port chaff would not have been of any use.

  30. Richards interview.

  31. USS Wainwright, SSM Engagement message, p. 2.

  32. The Wainwright did not detect the missile seeker of the Iranian Harpoon. U.S. experts later speculated that this may have been due to age and poor maintenance on the missile, which meant the missile never worked. Captain Chandler believed it was the electronic countermeasures that prevented the missile from hitting. Less interview; also CJTFME “Final Report,” p. 2; CJTFME message, “Final Report, Operation Praying Mantis” (DTG 030855Z), June 1988, p. 2.

  33. PTG Joshan, JTFME/MEF J-3, “Praying Mantis Brief,” 1988.

  34. USS Wainwright, Command History, 1988, entry for April 18.

  35. USS Wainwright message (202330Z), April 1988, p. 2; USS Wainwright message to CJTFME, “After Action Report, Operation Praying Mantis” (181638), April 1988, p. 1.

  36. American Embassy Abu Dhabi message to CJTFME, “Status of Americans in Mubarak Field” (181732Z), April 1988, p. 1; Command History, 1988, p. A6; Navias and Hooton, Tanker Wars, p. 171.

  37. There are some discrepancies about the number of Iranian aircraft involved. Captain Chandler recalled three while others interviewed recalled that one or two had headed south from Bandar Abbas, with one turning toward SAG C. The final after-action report states that only one Iranian aircraft had ever headed south and ended up being engaged by the Wainwright. JULLS Report, p. 7.

  38. JULLS Report, p. 7.

  39. Initially there were indications of possibly two Iranian aircraft, one landing at Kish Island and the other at Bandar Abbas. Later U.S. officials determined that there had been only one Iranian jet, and it had landed at Bandar Abbas.

  40. Message from COMDESRON 22 to CJTFME, “Operation Praying Mantis—Post Timeline 15” (DTG 210215Z), April 1988, April 20–22, 1988, Operations Archives, Naval Historical Center, Series VI, Box 20, File 11, Praying Mantis Messages; JTFME message to CINCCENT, “SPOT Report 021-88” (291950Z), April 1988, p. 1.

  41. The Sahand was a sister ship of the Sabalan. The shah had bought four of these 1,250-ton warships from Great Britain in the early 1970s.

  42. CTG 800.1 message, “Praying Mantis Ops—Summary of Lessons Learned,” p. 1.

  43. COMDESRON 22 message, “Timeline,” p. 2.

  44. The second F-14 ran short of fuel and had to break off to refuel with an air force tanker. Carlucci interview; Crist interview; Crowe interview; CAG 11, “Chronology,” p. 3. The basic facts of this incident are undisputed and, from what the author can discern, were first revealed by the CBS correspondent David Martin. But there are different versions as to why they needed the president’s permission to attack the Boghammers. Craig Symonds, in his book Decision at Sea, attributes this to ROE concern surrounding hot pursuit into Iranian territorial waters; see Symonds, pp. 311–12. The events happened quickly and were all done via telephone conversations. But the key ROE question clearly centered around a preemptive attack based upon a then closely guarded signals intelligence success in determining Iranian intentions.

  45. The bomblet weighs 1.32 pounds and has a 0.4-pound shaped-charge warhead of high explosives, which produces up to 250,000 psi at the point of impact, allowing penetration of approximately 7.5 inches of armor. Rockeye is most efficiently used against area targets requiring penetration to kill.

  46. Captain James Engler, USN (Ret.), interviews with author, July 16 and August 16, 2005.

  47. Dyer interview.

  48. Langston interview; CAG 11, “Chronology,” p. 4.

  49. George Burke, message posted to online forum, March 1, 2002, http://ussjosephstrauss.org/posted_messages.htm, accessed December 12, 2005; USS Joseph Strauss (DDG 16), Annual Command History, 1988, Enclosure 1, p. 2, Ships History Branch, Naval Historical Center.

  50. Chandler interview; Dyer interview; CTG 800.1 message to CJTFME, “Praying Mantis Ops—Summary of Lessons Learned” (231800Z), April 1988, p. 4; JTFME/MEF J-3, “Praying Mantis Brief, Blue on Blue”; JULLS Report, “Praying Mantis,” p. 7; COMDESRON, “Post Mission Timeline,” p. 2. Following Praying Mantis, Joint Task Force Middle East looked at the cause of the near friendly-fire incident, but came to no real conclusions, as it faded quickly from memory except by those involved. It is quite clear that the A-7 did not properly check in with the surface forces, but from what can be determined, none of the War at Sea strike force did either. It certainly was not given authority by the Wainwright or SAG D. To the CAGs’ credit, they reported trouble all day contacting the ships, and once they informed JTFME that they were launching the strike package to sink the Sahand, they operated under the assumption that this was their assigned mission and everyone knew it. The carrier had, perhaps, the best JOTS picture and had a clear idea of where the U.S. surface forces were located. Compounding the problem, the Joseph Strauss was not equipped to download the air tracks relayed by the E-2, and had to rely on its own organic systems to delineate the friendly-air picture.

  51. Although prior planning between the air group and Dyer had been nonexistent for this ballet of destruction, it nevertheless was the first coordinated air-surface missile attack by the U.S. Navy, a much heralded subject in postengagement wrap-ups. CJTFME message to CINCCENT, “SITREP” (DTG 181245Z), April 1988; CJTFME message to CINCCENT, “SITREP” (DTG 181308Z), April 1988, p. 1; Dyer interview; Langston interview.

  52. CTF 800.1 message to CJTFME, “Praying Mantis Ops, Chronological Report” (DTG 210600Z), April 1988, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Series VI, Box 20, Folder 15, p. 4; CTG 800.1 message to CJTFME, “Ordnance Delivery Summary” (DTG 191845Z), April 1988, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Series VI, Box 20, Folder 15, pp. 1–3; JTFME/MEF J-3, “Praying Mantis Brief: Ordnance Expenditure.” The list of ordnance used on the Sahand is as follows:

  AGM-84 Harpoon missile: 3

  Mk-82 laser-guided bomb: 1

  AGM-62 Walleye II: 2

  Mk-83: 20

  AGM-123 Skipper: 4

  53. USS
Joseph Strauss deck log, entry for Time 1601, April 18, 1988; Dyer interview. During my interview with Admiral Dyer, he showed the entire videotape taken by the Lamps and provided commentary. This was actually the second time the Lamps approached the Sahand for BDA. It closed with it following the first three Harpoons, but was quickly ordered away as the War at Sea strike package arrived.

  54. During the day, a key support for the navy aircraft came from the air force’s KC-10 refueling tankers of ELF-One. Just prior to H-hour, last-minute diplomacy by the U.S. government obtained overflight rights for U.S. support aircraft from Saudi Arabia, UAE, and, most important, Oman. After the attacks began, U.S. aircraft generally flew over Oman entering or exiting the Gulf, greatly shortening the flight route and avoiding the Iranian military’s concentration around the Strait of Hormuz. At CENTCOM’s request, the State Department obtained Omani permission for this later in the day, but Muscat had already agreed in all but formalities. Likewise, the UAE offered the United States blanket overflight clearance for two days. Over the course of the day, successive KC-10 tanker aircraft assumed a refueling track over Oman, south of the action but close enough to supply the SUCAPs within the Gulf. During the first twelve hours of Praying Mantis, the air force provided the navy with more than seven hundred thousand pounds of fuel. When the ELF-One stockpile of JP-5 aviation fuel at Dhahran ran short—used by the U.S. Navy because its higher flash point was safer on board ship—the Saudis volunteered an unlimited amount of Jet A-1 fuel to keep operations going.

  The entire issue of fuel for the carrier aircraft became a headache for Admiral Less during Praying Mantis. When the JP-5 stocks ran low, JP-4 from the air force was made available for the KC-10s as well as the slightly safer commercial Jet A-1 from the Saudi government. But JP-4 had a lower flash point, and the navy had always been reluctant in peacetime to refuel aircraft with it due to the potential safety hazard on board the carrier. In the middle of the day, Less received a phone call from a fellow admiral on the navy staff. He immediately laid into Less, complaining that he had better not let the air force tankers refuel the aircraft with JP-4. “We can’t have those fighters going back to the carrier with that; it’s a safety hazard.” In the middle of a fight, Less had little patience for this interruption. “You got to be shitting me that you’re even making this call! Goddamnit, there are some people out there who stand a chance of getting blown out of the water or losing their life. This is war and all you can talk about is not putting JP-4 into those airplanes? We’ll use JP-4 all day long if we have to, to keep airplanes up there! So you pump it over the side when you get back to the carrier and fill it up with JP-5 and get on with life.” Less interview; General George Crist letter to Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, May 20, 1988, p. 3; JULLS Report, p. 9. Over the two days of April 18–19, the air force passed over one million pounds of fuel to navy aircraft, much of it from Saudi stocks.

  55. Dyer interview.

  56. Captian Brian Davis, USMC, March 17, 1994; Crist interview.

  57. Carley interview.

  58. Message from CT801.1 to CINCCENT, “Praying Mantis OPREP-3 Feeder 002.”

  59. Engler interview; Zeller interview.

  60. Crowe, Line of Fire, p. 202; Carlucci interview.

  61. CINCCENT, “Update” (190900Z), April 1988, p. 4.

  62. Oakley interview.

  CHAPTER 19 THE TERRIBLE CLIMAX

  1. Lang interview; Lang, “The Land Between the Rivers.”

  2. To avoid getting entangled with the Kurdish conundrum or Turkey, Lang excluded any Iranian targets near the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and Iran and focused entirely on those facilitating Iranian attacks on the southern front between Basra and the Zagros Mountains. The Iraqis preferred working for the DIA, suspecting that the CIA had provided the intelligence that Oliver North had passed during the arms-for-hostages deal during 1986. See President’s Special Review Board Interview of Robert Gates, Hearings on the Nomination of Robert Gates to Be Director of Central Intelligence, pp. 319–20.

  3. Iraq also received satellite imagery from the French. While not as detailed as that provided by DIA and CIA, it allowed senior leadership of the Iraqi military to essentially confirm the information on Iranian forces provided by Washington. Author’s interview with a former brigadier general in the Iraq military.

  4. The gun was a 1,070-mm self-propelled gun mounted on a tank chassis, designed by North Korea to shell Seoul. Lang interview; Gnehm interviews.

  5. Gnehm interviews; Armitage interview.

  6. Taken from a message provided by a naval officer. The author has reviewed numerous messages that demonstrated Captain Rogers’s aggressiveness.

  7. Commander David Carlson, comments on article “The Vincennes Incident,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 1989, p. 88.

  8. John Cushman, “U.S. Expands Protection in Gulf to Any Neutral Vessel Attacked,” New York Times, April 30, 1988, p. A3.

  9. Rear Admiral William Fogarty, Formal Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988, Department of Defense, 1988 [hereafter Fogarty Report], p. 11.

  10. William Crowe, “Second Endorsement of Rear Admiral Fogarty’s ltr of 28 July 1988,” Fogarty Report, p. 2.

  11. Fogarty Report, pp. 14–15.

  12. Ibid., p. 2.

  13. Ibid., p. 12.

  14. The Rules of Engagement issued by CENTCOM and approved by the Joint Chiefs allowed for U.S. warships to enter Iranian waters during an engagement or as part of a deception operation. The Iranian waters would not serve as a safehaven from which they could launch attacks at U.S. forces with impunity. However, short of protecting his ship, captains were prohibited from entering Iranian waters for both international law and to avoid being mistaken for an Iranian ship by the freewheeling Iraqi air force. The Vincennes helicopter clearly violated this prohibition, and Rogers the intent of the instructions by moving into Iranian waters to protect its helicopter from a fight he instigated.

  15. There is no doubt that when the Vincennes fired on the Iranian airliner, it was in Iranian territorial waters. Admiral Crowe confirmed this on ABC’s Nightline in 1992. General Crist supported this during the author’s interview.

  16. . Kristen Ann Dotterway, “System Analysis of Complex Dynamics Systems: The Case of the USS Vincennes,” Naval Postgraduate School, June 1992, p. 13.

  17. In CENTCOM’s endorsement of the formal investigation, it stated that this initial IFF of an F-14 might have originated from an Iranian aircraft on the ground at Bandar Abbas.

  18. The investigation speculated that the pilot of the Airbus may have been busy talking between the Bandar Abbas and Dubai airport controllers, and simply wasn’t monitoring the proper frequency.

  19. Crowe interview.

  20. Fogarty Report, p. 41.

  21. News briefing at the Pentagon by Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Crowe, August 19, 1988.

  22. Carlson, comments on “The Vincennes Incident,” p. 92.

  23. Vice President George Bush, “The Persian Gulf Conflict and Iran Air 655,” Current Policy No. 1093, U.S. Department of State, 1988, p. 1.

  24. Stephen C. Pelletiere, The Iran-Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum (New York: Praeger, 1992), pp. 144–45.

  25. John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response (New York: Fabar and Faber, 1991), p. 248.

  26. CENTCOM, Command History, 1988, pp. ii–102.

  27. Robert Pear, “Radio Broadcast Shows Iran Leader Endorsed Decision for Truce,” New York Times, July 21, 1988.

  28. “Text of Iranian Letter to UN,” New York Times, July 19, 1988.

  29. CENTCOM, Command History, 1988, pp. ii–104.

  30. CINCCENT message to Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Public Affairs—Earnest Will Support Forces” (151200Z), July 1989.

  31. CINCCENT message to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Earnest Will
Review” (121225Z), December 1989, p. 2.

  32. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p. 426; Weiner interview; Giraldi interview. Two other retired and one former CIA officers recalled the same events.

  33. Interview with one former and two retired CIA officers in 2008; Giraldi interview; Greg Miller, “CIA Operation in Iran Failed When Spies Were Exposed,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2005, p. A1.

  34. For a description of nonofficial cover, see Ed Finn, “How Deep Is CIA Cover?” Slate, September 30, 2003, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/09/how_deep_is_cia_cover.html.

  35. Interview with former CIA officer in 2008.

  36. Giraldi interview.

  37. For an example of typical punishments and of the arrest of another U.S. spy held at Evin, see Roger Cooper, Death Plus Ten Years: My Life as the Ayatollah’s Prisoner (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 98, 224.

 

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